


Down The Middle

by brutumfulmen



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Biblical Themes (Abrahamic Religions), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Time, Gabriel the Messenger of God, Minor Character Death, Other, Sexual Content, The Crucifixion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-02 01:04:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21153032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brutumfulmen/pseuds/brutumfulmen
Summary: In the shadow of three crosses they watched, silent as the earth shook and Jesus took his last breath.Aziraphale left hours ago but still an angel remained with Crowley at Golgotha.





	Down The Middle

Crowley does not know when Aziraphale left his side but sometime after the sun reached its zenith overhead he turned to his right and found nothing but air.

“Oh,” he said aloud and to no one in particular. It was unusual for Aziraphale to depart first, truth be told. Crowley took great pains to ensure he never watched the angel leave for reasons he cared not to ever share with anyone.

At least that was accomplished, but he aches, nonetheless.

Were Aziraphale still beside him they might have afterwards gone to an inn and drowned their wretched mood in wine. With his appetite what it is right now, Crowley would be content to simply watch the angel eat as they tried moving on from this terrible day.

Except it is not over, a carpenter remains on a cross and humanity’s deliverance needs to be won before sundown. His eyes move over the thinning crowd, the novelty of a slow, agonising death for their messiah either too much to bear, or they had other reasons why they must move on, like he would need to eventually.

Not yet, he thinks of forty days in a desert as his eyes land once more on Christ suffering under the unforgiving sun. Not yet.

Midday passed without ceremony as the high sun blazes down upon Golgotha. Crowley swelters under his dark robes, eyes fixated to this horrific display, with no end in sight. Eventually though, Crowley looks around at the people still gathered, wondering if he can place them all in the Christ’s life. Ignoring the mother and father along with the most prominent of disciples, he takes his time scanning the throngs of listless people. As his eye lands on each one he notes how he remembers them, whether or not they were a successful temptation, does this until he finds one face unlike the others.

A man enshrouded in muted robes stands off to the side of the Christ’s closest humans. Tall, with hair cropped close unlike the local fashions of this time period. Crowley's wings flutter in the other dimension, responding to something his human form cannot sense, and in the span of a half-blink Crowley peeks past the corporeal to see _ethereal_.

The man, or rather the angel, immediately looks away.

Crowley smirks, slinking his way through the crowd. When he approached the angel took a deep mortal breath then blew it out, as if gathering himself.

“Archangel Gabriel, so _good_ to see you here,” Crowley greets, lips curling around the word. He does not keep company with many angels save for one, does not have much else to say to an Archangel let alone Aziraphale’s boss, but he needs to make sure of one thing.

Had he seen them together earlier? There is no way to explain themselves if Gabriel had come to check on one of his principalities only to find a demon at his side.

Paperwork would be the least of their worries.

Gabriel slid his gaze over to Crowley in grim acknowledgment, a brief cataloguing of Crowley’s features takes place, but he made not reply. Perhaps he did not recognize Crowley, it had been thousands of years and an eternity since they last crossed paths. Long before the Great War. Crowley forced himself to take steady breaths, keep his expression neutral.

Grey eyes narrowed, then looked away.

“Demon,” Gabriel says in a flat tone, dismissing Crowley without another word.

More than Crowley expected, actually. Angels either try to attack him on sight or flat out ignore him, but he clearly had not seen them both together, so Crowley relaxes.

For just a moment, as Gabriel for some reason is talking again.

“If you’re going to lurk, could you possibly do something about your eyes? You are going to scare the humans with your - _hideousness_,” Gabriel sneered, jaw clenched. It would be vicious, if Crowley had not noted the anger in his voice does not quite reach his eyes, pinched with lines etched deep in the corners.

For someone that doesn’t sleep, Gabriel sure looks like he could use it. If he's in such bad shape, why was he even here?

“I’m not the one over here looking like a storm cloud ready to dump all my problems on them,” Crowley hissed back, eyes openly roving Gabriel’s form taking in the grey hair, grey robes, even grey eyes. Angels, he always insists, have no sense of style when choosing corporeal forms. Did Gabriel even try to look remotely interesting?

“Do you really have to make this place more depressing?”

Gabriel took the bait, crossing his arms. “You approached _me_, demon. I’m on official duty.”

“Looking like that?” Crowley flicks a hand over Gabriel, out towards the gathered crowd. “Not hardly. I’m the expert at lying here, try again.”

Crowley is nothing but some random demon to Gabriel. He likes this, how irreverent his words can be, how unrefined Gabriel is even as he tries to maintain a modicum of Heaven’s etiquette. Anonymity makes people, even angels, say things they usually would not. It worked with Aziraphale on Eden’s wall four millennia ago, it can work here.

Stepping closer he tries again, refrains from letting his words elongate. “I won’t tell if you won’t.” It’s a line he’s used countless times. Works all the time, well most of it, anyways.

“There is nothing that can be hidden from God,” Gabriel counters without pause and while it’s annoying to hear Crowley sees an opening, striking with fangs out.

“So that means She’s okay us chit-chatting. Don’t see any smiting going on, after all. No sense in either of us leaving.”

Gabriel shifted, his eyes not moving from where the Christ struggled against his body’s inevitable decline. Not too long now, Crowley assumed. He looked over to Mary’s pale face cut brutally by tear-tracks, eyes marred with a pain she has carried for days as though his suffering was her own, then up towards Heaven, and wondered who loves him more.

What a way to kill your son.

He looks back to Gabriel, who seems to be mulling over his earlier words. Gabriel has a better grasp on the politics of Heaven than either Crowley or Aziraphale, but he is in unfamiliar territory interfacing directly with a demon, and unwittingly with the Serpent of Eden. Eventually he breathes slowly out through his nose, deflating, and levels Crowley with an impressive glare.

“You can stay if you remain respectful,” Gabriel finally says and Crowley rolls his eyes.

“Please. I have been here for hours and nothing has happened. Besides, aren’t you curious why I am here?” Crowley asked, tugging his dark robes closer to him. The sun is still blazed high, but the air has begun to chill. A storm, Crowley idly guesses, might be on its way but he cannot place when.

“Why would you want to tell me,” Gabriel clearly did not appreciate small talk, or prefers not to partake in it. Perhaps Crowley’s presence is a reminder of all the bureaucratic nonsense he will go back to after this wraps up.

Crowley shrugged, a half-hearted gesture. He had his own reasons, not keen on revealing too much as this anonymity to another celestial being is a temptation even he cannot resist. Once Aziraphale and him became closer he could see censure take hold of the angel. Something about others knowing you makes, well, them knowing you to be unbearable. 

He jerks his head in the direction of the middle cross.

“I knew him.”

_That_ got Gabriel’s attention. He turns to face Crowley, perfectly eye level, waiting for him to elaborate. Gabriel’s eyes flicked back and forth between his as the silence wore on, and Crowley raises a sharp, auburn brow.

“Carpenters from Galilee make good company. And you?” He almost laughs when Gabriel scowls, turning back towards the cross. Angelic etiquette was going to demand Gabriel reciprocate the conversation, but Crowley had not been deceptive. It is the truth as much as can be said without tipping his hand and revealing his identity. Heaven no doubt knew of the Serpent tempting the Christ in the desert. What they never reported is how between the three times he tried - and failed - to tempt him, they walked together, they talked late into the night. Crowley would light a fire to keep the Christ warm and extinguish it come morning before he awoke.

In return, during these forty days and nights he spoke to the demon Crowley without preamble or judgment spilling from his strange human tongue, looked at Crowley with eyes that bordered on otherworldly, and Crowley savoured how it felt to be so close to God again. To feel _loved_ by God again. A wisp of Her unconditional love contained within human form, as though caught behind a veil, but closer than Crowley has been in so long—

The Christ gave him something he had not known in eternity. It would be his thanks, standing here at the end.

“We’re both the only two here that aren’t human. Not even Heaven is watching at this point," Crowley hoped he sounded coaxing, if not tempting.

“No one else for you to tell it to.”

Whatever it was in his words that worked, it worked well. Gabriel rolled his shoulders, looking out from the shadows towards Mary and Joseph and those who beloved the Christ as they stood close to the cross. Crowley watches the Roman guards hovering nearby, considers their indifference.

“I have delivered to humanity three messages about the Christ,” Gabriel talked as though giving a presentation but Crowley listened close, tilting his head towards him even as he still watches the Romans.

“Mary was the third, obviously about his birth. I decided after everything that I should be here to see what my messages amounted to.” Crowley stiffened in surprise, whipping his head back to Gabriel who refused to meet his eyes. Now _that_ was unexpected. He knew of the three times throughout history where an angel appeared to deliver a message about Christ. Hell went ballistic whenever it happened, and Crowley was tasked double the workload each time.

Usually lower ranked angels went about delivering messages to humanity, though. Why Gabriel? He asked this out loud, not bothering to hide his shock. Or close his slacken jaw.

Gabriel huffed, hands clasped behind his back in a way to give him something to do, obviously not used to standing for such extended periods of time, Crowley noted. How long has he walked on Earth?

“Considering I stand at God’s side I'm sure She had excellent reasons to choose me," he says, voice dripping with pride.

“Did you know, then?” Crowley’s brows could not rise higher. “Did God tell you _this_ would happen?"

Gabriel paused, smugness falling from his face. His eyes flicker to Mary, then to the ground, silent for a long stretch that Crowley waited out. Then-

“Have you ever delivered a message from God before?”

“No, I did something else. Was rather important around that time of eternity, no time for letters.” Crowley does not speak of his past. No demon does. The angels have forgotten who they were, and there was nothing to gain from any of it at this point.

Gabriel seems to think otherwise. “Hm. We might have known one another, then.”

They did. Crowley does not say this either. Demons have their limits for overall integrity and goodness. All of his is invested in Aziraphale.

“The Almighty,” Gabriel continued, then swallowed his next words. Such a minute human detail, he must have lived here longer than he wants to admit.

“As the messenger of God it is my purpose to deliver Her word, not understand its intent.”

Sounds a lot like God told Gabriel here’s what you need to say and don't question how bad things end up when you do say it, but he doesn’t mention all that. Crowley knows beyond all doubt now that Gabriel has not left Earth since he delivered the message to Mary. He probably travelled with them to Bethlehem, entertained young Jesus with his horrible attempts at behaving like a human.

He must have walked with him up to this rock. Watched him be nailed to that cross still not understanding how his message went this way all the while asking himself what he had done wrong.

Gabriel the messenger of God, who reached out just three times to humanity and each one was about the Christ, telling of all he would accomplish for humanity, how he would save them with his love. It seemed cruel, Crowley wondered, to not at least give Gabriel _something_ to work with, to prepare for this with.

God has never been one to shy away from cruel, however, in Crowley's experience.

The first criminal, the one to the Christ’s right that will enter Heaven today, at last gives up the ghost, sagging on the cross. He struggles to twist his head and face the criminal’s lifeless body, whatever he sees, if anything at all, is lost to everyone gathered there. Crowley looks away, back to Gabriel, his grey eyes never wavering from Jesus.

“No offense,” for once, he means it. “But, sounds like you aren’t the ‘messenger of God’ at all.” Gabriel goes inhumanly still at his side. A sharp crackle of static in the air around them raises the hair on Crowley’s arms. Oh, he’s on dangerous ground, but it needs to be said, just one nudge in this direction. What happens next is not on him, he’ll say if questioned.

“Sounds to me like you’re the messenger of Jesus.”

Gabriel does not yell, nor does he smite Crowley right there on the spot, both of which Crowley would not have blamed him for. He does nothing for the longest time, then bowed his head, and spoke so quietly Crowley almost missed his next words.

“Would it have made a difference?”

Crowley reels from the conversation pivot, but hears what is not asked, in the way all demons can. Would anything Gabriel said during these thirty years to Jesus, to Mary, to God even, have saved him.

“Doubt it,” Crowley says, and wishes it were otherwise. Gabriel raises his head to look at Crowley, but he is not lying. If Gabriel had even known this would happen long before and tried to pick another family, God would just have impregnated some other woman, had Gabriel convince some other husband not to divorce her. She would have had Gabriel still look on as the Son of God was brought up only to be slaughtered for humanity’s sake no matter what.

Only God in human image could save that which was made in Her image, he supposed, unsure why any of this was needed to begin with. He decides, as the second criminal dies and the Christ looks over to him, that he does not care what Her reasoning is.

“What would you have done different?” Crowley wants to know, even though it gains him nothing. Always with the questions.

Gabriel opened his mouth, eyes darting over the cross, over Jesus, then shook his head, hands clenched into fists.

“Nothing I possibly could have said, could have tried matters,” he spat out as a ripple of fury in the other dimension whips through Crowley’s spirit and he almost sways from the force of it. Crowley once knew that feeling as well as he knew the stars, until it boiled his flesh and left him with nothing but bones and rage, so long ago yet not nearly far enough gone. It would not do for Gabriel to suffer that same fate over the very same thing, it would _not_.

Against everything in him, Crowley moved closer. He’s a demon, yes, and he might not have asked for any of this responsibility, but here it is.

“It matters to humanity that you did not try,” he urged on a whisper, himself trying.

“It matters to Jesus that you would have.”

Slowly, Gabriel turned to him, face unreadable, but Crowley knows humanity better than his own kind by this point. Gabriel might be an angel, but it is human eyes he looks at Crowley with. Crowley stares back through serpent eyes, seeing nothing of an angel in this moment. Merely Gabriel the messenger, whose purpose all these millennia now hangs dying on a cross for a reason too sad for either of them to understand.

Jesus called out to God over the barren hilltop, voice anguished, holy beyond measure, and Crowley does not look when he hears Gabriel gasp out what sounds like a sob. When another follows.

Later that night he will have the chance to look.

The moment will come after they walk the long road to Gabriel’s oddly constructed home just outside the city. This is to be the last night any celestial being is to inhabit its walls, as both go separate ways come morning light.

Mary will come by three days later to find it occupied by a family she has never met and ask them about the strange man who once lived here, who brought her an important message over thirty years ago, but Gabriel will not know this. Just as he will not know many things that happen on Earth from this point onward.

Crowley will resist making a comment about how he loves what Gabriel has done with the place (there isn’t anything in it save for a bed and a table with no chairs). Nor does he allow himself to wonder what Aziraphale would do in this place (he would never live here, like this Archangel who so faithfully followed the message he treasured all these years). Gabriel will stand in the centre of his home silent as a tomb and Crowley cannot help but think perhaps God’s Son is not all that was buried today. There is no offer of a drink or a place to sit, but Gabriel does not ask him to leave and it is more of a welcome than Crowley has had in centuries.

With nothing more to do, he will reach for Gabriel, impressed when the Archangel does not push him away. Grateful when he pulls Crowley in close.

They will stand near a never before used bed while Crowley undoes the Archangel’s plain grey robes. Crowley will not be able to stop his fanged grin as Gabriel’s eyes, almost silver in the dim light, widened as he strips off his own dark ones.

Gabriel’s hands will reach up then recoil, and Crowley will see him in a way Aziraphale never could.

The messenger of God - no, of _Jesus_, Crowley will insist to Heaven and Hell and God Herself - stands before him hunched over, wracked with unwarranted guilt over the message he nurtured and carried through the ages, of his terror in transferring into actions the pain his words have caused. Crowley cradles his sorrowful face, thumbs running atop the dark circles under those moon-grey eyes as if he could wipe them away, pressed his forehead to Gabriel’s.

Willing him to understand how it is none of his fault, it never could be.

They will lay down with only the moonlight as their cover, too many limbs and too much skin for Gabriel to understand in so little time. He won’t say anything as he runs a hesitant hand down Crowley’s back because a messenger does not need much to get the intent across. But Crowley knows a hole-ridden message is what lead them here, and Gabriel deserves the whole story for once, to know how things end.

So, Crowley will fill in the blanks Gabriel needs filled by taking those hands pressed over his far too human skin, show him all the ways to make a difference without words.

He will teach Gabriel how to kiss, and what can be spoken between two mouths pressing so close that his tongue can slip past lips and teeth and Gabriel’s own tongue, silent inside his mouth. It will be awkward as Gabriel struggles to keep up, but Crowley is a demon and was once a beginner also, albeit very long ago. He can be patient, with himself and with Gabriel.

_You can tell me_, he will pull away to press into the column of Gabriel’s neck.

_No one can be hurt by a message here_, he will write into the hard lines of Gabriel’s chest.

_I have nothing I can say, and everything to say_, Gabriel will mouth back, lips tracing random patterns into the flat planes of Crowley’s belly all the way down between parted thighs. Crowley will convey guidance through moans and careful nudges instead of orders. Gabriel will hear him loud and clear in a way Crowley is not used to being heard, responding with the lines of his body arching off the bed, writhing under each soft touch.

Crowley will drag himself into Gabriel’s lap, wrap his legs around a perfectly tapered waist to run fingers through short grey hair as they kiss and then kiss harder. He won’t need to tell Gabriel to hold him closer, he won’t need to tell Gabriel how to move.

At first, they will go slow, in all the ways Crowley knew mattered.

It will take some time. Crowley has never done this with an angel and Gabriel has never done this at all. They will get there eventually though, clinging to one another on waves of pleasure that leave them gasping and relief unwinding deep inside. As Crowley sags against Gabriel coming down from his high, hot tears drip-drop onto his collarbones in sharp contrast to the cooling sweat on their bodies. And with an ache in his chest he will know why.

Before he can pull away to look, strong, _gentle_ fingers dig into Crowley’s sweat-soaked back keeping their bodies joined, his face concealed. Crowley sighs when wet lips pressed to his neck, to his cheek, able to feel the trembling of Gabriel’s jaw, each shudder rippling through Gabriel’s broad shoulders.

Crowley will say nothing, instead pulling him down onto the bed and rolling them over in a smooth movement, this time guiding Gabriel’s legs to rest around Crowley’s lean hips. He knows he should ignore the tears Gabriel tried to keep hidden when he turns away, eyes shut tight even as Crowley opens him up with such tenderness his own heart aches. There is nothing to say about a loss that some anonymous demon cannot possibly understand anyways, Crowley guesses Gabriel to be thinking.

And yet Crowley does understand. The only other being there at Golgotha today that somehow really could understand everything never said, everything never done. Somehow, somehow.

Knowing all this, Crowley will lean down to kiss him deeply as he begins to move with more gentle care than he should ever know. He will swallow each wracking sob Gabriel makes so no one in Heaven can possibly hear. Finally, as Gabriel shudders apart, he will enfold long arms and dark wings around Gabriel, trapped so far down in his endless grief, and hope it is enough.

Until then, they stand together, Heaven and Hell’s vigil to another piece of God’s ineffable plan. Side by side and shamefully powerless at the base of the Christ’s feet, with his loved ones gathered around. Everyone is silent now, their tears long since spent as the hollowness of inevitability creeps in. Another hour slunk by, and the sky turns bleak until it reaches the exact shade of Gabriel’s eyes, then darkens further. Around them the ground shakes, fissures race towards the three crosses.

The sun blots out, and Crowley looks up to the Christ one last time.

In what seems the stopping of time Jesus takes his last breath, a rattling rush of air that sweeps his very soul away with it. Somewhere in the distance, over earth splitting underfoot and people’s cries, Crowley hears a veil tear right down the middle and wonders at what it means.

He grabs Gabriel’s hand, holds tight. Neither speak when Gabriel entwines their fingers as the sun finally sets and only they remain, there at Golgotha.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.


End file.
